Dreamweaver
by Nubian Queen
Summary: What if the story we thought we knew wasn't really the story after all?


_This is just a little something that occured to me one day. If you find it interesting, please drop me a line and let me know. Thanks and enjoy!!_

Jareth is a Dreamweaver, a race of beings that thrive off of and manipulate dreams. He traverses the world of dreams, harnessing their energy to provide life to his kingdom and to himself. Occasionally, a Weaver will encounter a creature whose dreams are strong enough for more than one visit, for a dreamweaver can only take from a living being once, but never more than twice, without damaging them.

And then, he encounters something he has never before dealt with in his extremely long life.

A dreamer of such immense power and energy that they could sustain both he and his world for the rest of their life and never be harmed. Sarah Williams, child though she was, had the potential to keep his world thriving indefinitely. However, she was mortal. Eventually, she would end as all mortals ended and all her brilliant dreampower with her.

_And that's when it came to him._

If she were to live in the Underground, she _could _exist indefinitely. But in order for a dreamspell of the strength it would take to keep her permanently Underground to take effect, she would have to be physically in the Underground first…and she would have to be their willingly.

So he began to groom her, subtly feeding her dreams with touches of his magic, making sure she had items, be they toys, games, whatever, that contained elements of his world. But by far, his greatest triumph was The Book. In it he had placed the spell that would weave the dream to allow her to enter his world, to create a dream specifically suited to her and thusly, to give her the desire to stay there…forever.

But, as things often do, something went wrong.

First was the girl's mother. A hedonistic, pleasure-loving individual at the best of times and downright neglectful of the needs of her most special child at the worst, she finally left her small family, which was a cause of great celebration in the beginning (at least for Jareth). However, he noticed that the girl began changing after this. It became more pronounced as her father began to spend less and less time with her and more and more time with his new love. And then, the man married the woman and things began to move quickly from bad to worse.

Oh, the girl was no less powerful, no less the dreamer and her dreams continued to be a powerful source of energy for his world but…her dreams were becoming steadily darker, more unhappy. And for Jareth and his kingdom, which relied so heavily on this one source of energy, their reality began to change with them. Jareth tried his best to stem the tide of the creeping darkness, but it was no use. Unless he could change the girl, he could not change her dreams. But worse of all, was The Book. The same Book that was supposed to lead the girl eventually into her grandest dream and thus into his world had changed as well. Since it relied on Jareth's magic, and his magic relied, at least in part, on the girl and her dreams, the darkness had begun to seep into it as well. This not so subtle change remained, somehow, unnoticed by the girl, but was gravely marked by the troubled King.

Her need to control…something, anything, was being played out in the book and had turned what once was (and should have remained) an entrancing, happily ever after into a tale of loss, betrayal and challenge. How would he ever manage to entice her to stay if she entered his world and saw only a reflection of what she had come to expect in her own?

He tried to undo the spell in the Book, to find another way to reach her but, somehow, the book and the spell had taken on a life of their own. And so, he was forced to watch helplessly as his grand dreams for his kingdom began to wither like overripe fruit on the vine.

And then, it happened.

Unexpectedly, long before she should have, the girl called on the power of the Book and entered his kingdom. And, because of the dreamspell he had woven into it so long ago, he and his kingdom were forced to become everything she had wished for.

Only she wished for something the King did not, and could never have, expected.

She wished for him to be in love with her.

Love was something totally unfamiliar to his people. Duty, honor, pride, along with any number of darker emotions, he knew well. But love? It took him utterly by surprise and, by so doing, took him utterly.

Never had he been so ensorcelled by another being. The agony of unbridled emotion she subjected him to humiliated him. He could barely function under the onslaught of unfamiliar sensations. Never had he longed for something more than for the lovely dreamer to feel for him as he did her. But how was he to show her? Constrained as he was by the boundaries of the spell, he was helpless to do anything except be what she expected him to be…and that was her enemy. What perverse cruelty had made her wish for her antagonist to be in love with her? How could he make her truly SEE him?

It was simple really.

A spell within a spell. A dream within a dream…only this time, it would be what her HEART truly desired, not what she wished for.

And it had been better than he could have hoped. There, in that enchanted ballroom, he had been able to take her into his arms. She had been so beautiful in her white gown, as luminescent as any of Morpheus' children. And as he had woven his songspell around her, he knew, KNEW, he would have her. Never in his existence had he felt as drunk with exhilaration and…happiness as he did then.

And then she had left him.

He had known then, in that moment, as the shattered remains of her dream rained down about him, as the notes of his song spell dissipated into insubstantial mist around him, that he had lost. He would lose her; both he and his kingdom would lose the greatest treasure they had ever found.

The knowledge ate at him.

And as he confronted her at last, exhausted by the pain of his unrequited passion and the effort it took to hide it, he could not help but make one, last plea, useless as he knew it would be.

Oh, her eyes were so cruel. He could see her rejection in them, long before she said the words that would turn his world on its axis. What made it even more painful was that he could see as well, her dawning realization that perhaps, possibly, he was sincere in his love after all.

The only, small hope he had was that, after the dreamspell had run its course, so to would his mad love for her.

If only Fate was so kind.

_To be continued...if the Fates are kind._


End file.
